Can anyone give me any information on USENET?

[ebally]

Every now and again I see people mentioning USENET on various forums. I was just wondering if anyone can shed any light on what USENET actually is?

[balamw]

Every now and again I see people mentioning USENET on various forums. I was just wondering if anyone can shed any light on what USENET actually is?
Before the WWW, and before forums like this USENET a.k.a. internet news was a great place for discussion, getting help, etc... It was also the internet's first major source of pr0n.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

B

[ebally]

Thank for replying.

It all seems soo complicated...! Am I to understand that you need to subscribe to a server (with a monthly fee) to access USENET?

[iMeowbot]

Am I to understand that you need to subscribe to a server (with a monthly fee) to access USENET?
Maybe, maybe not. Your ISP may have one quietly running in the corner somewhere (the hostname is traditionally news.yourisp.net if it's there). There are still some free ones around for text too, though the binary stuff (with basically the same junk found on the p2p networks) usually involves a paid subscription.

You can also get to Usenet for free through Google (http://groups.google.com/), although their current interface is kind of pathetic.

[balamw]

You can also get to Usenet for free through Google (http://groups.google.com/), although their current interface is kind of pathetic.
Truly sad, isn't it?

At least they kept all the data from DejaNews. I can still find posts of mine dating back to 1992 or so. (Believe it or not some of these old posts have come in handy. How did I solve that last time?). They even somehow imported some groups from a BBS I was active on in those days.

Web forums like this seem ephemeral by comparison.

B

[mkrishnan]

Web forums like this seem ephemeral by comparison.

Yeah, sad... so many posts lost in the wind. :( I guess companies like Google might be really saving a lot of that material. Makes the web feel more permanent. :) But I guess that might be an illusion. :(

[MisterMe]

Thank for replying.

It all seems soo complicated...! Am I to understand that you need to subscribe to a server (with a monthly fee) to access USENET?If you have access to the Internet, then you likely have access to USENET. Certainly my ISP has a news server. Yours probably does as well. If you ISP has a technical support web site, it will give you the URL for the server.

[leishan]

If you are willing to pay for access, then www.easynews.com is a really good place to find stuff.

[mkrishnan]

If you are willing to pay for access, then www.easynews.com is a really good place to find stuff.

But if you don't even know what USENet is or whether it'll be valuable, then start with groups.google.com ... then you can buy this kind of stuff if you need it. :)

[iMeowbot]

If you have access to the Internet, then you likely have access to USENET. Certainly my ISP has a news server. Yours probably does as well. If you ISP has a technical support web site, it will give you the URL for the server.
That used to be true. :( The bandwidth and storage requirements are phenomenal if any real attempt is make to keep up with the binary load, so more and more ISPs have been dropping the service over the past several years.

[superbovine]

Thank for replying.

It all seems soo complicated...! Am I to understand that you need to subscribe to a server (with a monthly fee) to access USENET?

Ironically before I have even touched a gui much less a machine with mosaic, i used usenet quite frequently. Seems, a bit odd anyone would think it as complex by today's standards.

[balamw]

Seems, a bit odd anyone would think it as complex by today's standards.
Says a lot for the unfiying power of HTTP doesn't it.

Remember UUCP, FTP and Gopher? Their functions have been replaced with web services now, it's microsoft's worst fear come true. ;)

B

[yellow]

Ahhh.. alt.binaries.erotica, I know thee well..

[MisterMe]

Ahhh.. alt.binaries.erotica, I know thee well..Do you need a tissue or a damp cloth?

[superbovine]

Says a lot for the unfiying power of HTTP doesn't it.

Remember UUCP, FTP and Gopher? Their functions have been replaced with web services now, it's microsoft's worst fear come true. ;)

B

ftp i still use daily. i used usenet the most. I wasn't to keen on gopher cause i didn't really have any information i needed to obtain from there.

[superbovine]

Ahhh.. alt.binaries.erotica, I know thee well..

bahahah... i always seemed to find the "research" facilities with free anonymous ftp of porn.

[balamw]

ftp i still use daily.
bahahah... i always seemed to find the "research" facilities with free anonymous ftp of porn.
And now we know what you use ftp for every day. ;)

I remember those days too, having been one of those research facilities. Our Linux ftp server password was hacked and the hard drive got full of porn and warez in a matter of minutes. Amazing to think that finding 200MB of free space on the 'net was considered a good place to stash stuff.

B

[yellow]

ftp i still use daily.


/fires up ethereal... it's cleartext password snooping time!

[superbovine]

/fires up ethereal... it's cleartext password snooping time!

find my gateway and sniff away :D

[yellow]

find my gateway and sniff away :D

Bah I'm too busy getting piece 12 of 37. 25 to go.. hot diggity!!

[mkrishnan]

Bah I'm too busy getting piece 12 of 37. 25 to go.. hot diggity!!

:D

Gotta love MIME content encoding. :)

[iMeowbot]

Gotta love MIME content encoding. :)
Grr, it only the binaries kids would just use MIME, life would be way simpler. But noooooooooo, they're still using uuencode and this weird almost-but-not-quite-8-bit thing called yEnc that doesn't fix any of the things that were wrong with uu.

[yellow]

uuencode.. awesome.. I still have a couple uuencode/uudecodes around here somewhere.. on floppy probably.

[mrichmon]

Grr, it only the binaries kids would just use MIME, life would be way simpler. But noooooooooo, they're still using uuencode and this weird almost-but-not-quite-8-bit thing called yEnc that doesn't fix any of the things that were wrong with uu.

Come now. The real posts where shar archives. :)

tar and feather the thing, shar it and embed the whole steaming pile in the unshar script, post and repeat. Ahhh, good times.

[SummerBreeze]

It all seems so difficult, and all of a sudden I feel really young since I've never really experienced the world of USENET. Thanks for the clarifications on what it is, I used to see the word all the time and I didn't really know what it meant.

[iMeowbot]

Come now. The real posts where shar archives. :)
That's still useful! Some ancient patches and updates found their way into the Google archive intact thanks to shar, so it's possible to reconstruct some historical software versions that are "lost" (or buried too deep in closets for anyone to be bothered to dig them out).

[Dm84]

uuencode.. awesome.. I still have a couple uuencode/uudecodes around here somewhere.. on floppy probably.Stuffit will encode/decode uuencode.

[iMeowbot]

It all seems so difficult, and all of a sudden I feel really young since I've never really experienced the world of USENET. Thanks for the clarifications on what it is, I used to see the word all the time and I didn't really know what it meant.
We may be making it all sound worse than it is :) It's really no more complicated to use than email!

[Lacero]

I've been using the Internet since 1995 first on a dedicated T1 line and now on residential DSL, and I've never visited USENET. It's even still a little bit of a mystery to me.

Whatever it was used for, I think everything we do now can be accomplished through the web, email and IM.


Here's to the Crazy Ones http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=35452 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/movies/think-different.mov)

[superbovine]

I've been using the Internet since 1995 first on a dedicated T1 line and now on residential DSL, and I've never visited USENET. It's even still a little bit of a mystery to me.

Whatever it was used for, I think everything we do now can be accomplished through the web, email and IM.


Here's to the Crazy Ones http://forums.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=35452 (http://www.uriah.com/apple-qt/movies/think-different.mov)

Usenet was basically whole lot of bulletin boards like this one used to exchange information and files about a specific topic before the advent of the web and gui's. It is more comparable to the macrumors forums that e-mail or chat. Usenet is still very popular in the Warez community and p0rn. There are still regular boards you can take a look at as well.

You can view usenet from google groups. In the olden days it was just text menus and you scrolled through it. after that you select the message and responded to it, or you download the uuencoded file that was attached usually in multiple parts and ran your script to decode it.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.programmer.games?lnk=lr

[HiRez]

I have been extremely happy with GigaNews (http://www.giganews.com) as my Usenet provider (even though I get it for free with my Earthlink subscription, GigaNews is vastly superior). I also use Unison (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22293) to read and post, a native OS X shareware application.

[yellow]

I've found Unison to be rather... crashy...

[whooleytoo]

The Mac programming groups (especially, comp.sys.mac.programmer.help) can be superb.

I frequent a few sport (F1 and rugby) groups as well, but they can be quite cliquish.

[yellow]

It's funny there's a topic about this, I've not used USENET in a million years and I'm currently fighting the tech support desks at the uni over a problem they insist isn't happening. <sigh> Freaking usenet.

[HiRez]

I've found Unison to be rather... crashy...Yeah, it is. But it still does a decent job for me most of the time.

[prophet621]

I stumbled upon Unison after several days of looking for a decent binary reader/downloader. Out of all the apps I've tried Unison is by far the best in my opinion for the mac platform (I use Newsbin on Windows). Unison does occasionally lock up on me and I can't always kill it without rebooting but it doesn't happen often so I can tolerate it.